In general use, herbs are any plants with leaves, seeds, or flowers used for flavoring, food, medicine, or perfume, or parts of such a plant used in cooking. Herbs have a variety of uses including culinary, medicinal, and in some cases spiritual usage. In medicinal or spiritual use any parts of the plant might be considered to be “herbs”, including the leaves, roots, flowers, seeds, bark or berries. Culinary use of the term “herb” typically distinguishes between herbs and spices, with “herbs” referring to fresh or dried leafy green parts of a plant, and spices referring to the other parts of the plant, usually dried.
Plants have the ability to synthesize a wide variety of chemical compounds that are used to perform important biological functions, and to defend against attack from predators such as insects, fungi and herbivorous mammals. Many of these phytochemicals have beneficial effects on long-term or short-term health or mental state when consumed by humans, and many can be effectively used to treat human diseases and other conditions. At least 12,000 such compounds have been isolated so far, which is estimated to be less than 10 percent of the total. Chemical compounds found in plants through mechanisms identical to those already well understood for chemical compounds in conventional drugs, enabling herbal medicines to be as effective as conventional medicines.
Smoking is a practice in which a substance, most commonly tobacco, is burned and the smoke is tasted or inhaled, primarily as a route of administration for recreational drug use, as combustion releases active substances such as nicotine and makes them available for absorption through the lungs. The most common method of smoking today is through cigarettes, which are primarily industrially manufactures but may also be hand-rolled from loose tobacco and rolling paper. Many other smoking implements exist, including cigars, pipes, bidis, hookahs, vaporizers, and bongs. Smoking can be traced back to as early as 5000 BC, and has been recorded in many different cultures around the world. Early smoking evolved in association with religious ceremonies. After the European exploration and conquest of the Americans, the practice of smoking tobacco quickly spread to the rest of the world, eventually introducing a new type of social activity and a form of drug intake which had been previously unknown.
One common alternative to smoking herbs is to use a vaporizer. Vaporization is an alternative to burning that avoids the inhalation of many irritating toxic and carcinogenic by-products. During vaporization, the substance to be vaporized is heated to a temperature below its combustion point but high enough to release the active ingredient. No combustion should occur, so very little ashy smokiness is smelled or tasted. Vapor also ideally contains minimal particulate or tar, and significantly lower concentrations of noxious gases such as carbon monoxide. With little to no smoke produced and cooler temperatures, the irritating and harmful effects of smoking are reduced, as is secondhand smoke.
Many vaporizers on the market are complicated, inconvenient to use, or bulky, making them less than portable, in addition to using methods that provide limited or no filtering of the vapor, require a lighter or butane to use, or require batteries that are only effective for a few uses.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a portable, discreet, pen sized electric herb vaporizer with a ceramic heating chamber and a ceramic filter for improved vaporization and filtration.